Back in May of 2008, when I was living in Venice Beach, I blogged a YouTube video of an 1899 ragtime piece. Yesterday I was coming out of the subway in San Francisco and the banjo-mandolin player from that video was busking.
In person he’s a very good player. Dennis Pash is the guy’s name.
Here’s my photo from the subway:
Here’s the original video:
The San Francisco Marathon goes through Golden Gate Park, and the organizers hired musicians to make it festive. The Joy Drops got booked. The band was standup bass, trumpet/french horn, and guitar/mandolin/singing. Racers start early, so the gig went from 6:45 AM to 10.
The organizers put us in a Chinese-style pagoda on a small island on the far edge of a marsh beside the road, in woods a few hundred feet from the runners. It was such an odd location that as we were setting up we thought we might actually be lost.
We didn’t know we were in the right place until a couple runners escorted by police went by on the road, off in the distance. There was mist on the water and almost nobody in earshot during the first few songs.
It was like being paid to play by ourselves far away from any listeners.
Gradually the number of racers increased, the mist burned off, and the band heated up. Runners would look around to see where the noise was coming from , turn and gawk, and give us a big whole-arm wave.
On the island a few people happened by. Parents with strollers stopped off for their kids to watch us. An older Chinese couple came by and stayed a while, the woman clapping very loudly as if she was communicating something.
It was an epically easy gig since nobody heard us for longer than a few seconds. Like playing for amnesiacs, the people who heard us weren’t in a position to know whether we sucked most of the time or just at that moment. We skipped around the set list, repeating songs that needed practice, trying out new tunes that we had never rehearsed before, telling jokes and laughing a lot.
We swapped stories about bad gigs. Ryan the bass player won: he played a swingers party on Valentine’s Day. There were tarps on the floor for the couples. He kept his eyes on his sheet music as much as humanly possible and during the breaks kept his distance from the hors d’oeuvres.
It was cold in the early morning so I wore a silly coonskin cap.
At 10 AM we were done playing for the day and I had a coffee at the boathouse nearby. The last stragglers were still passing.
I’m a better musician now than ten years ago. A lot.
Ten years ago I thought I had taken my abilities to the limit of what my talent would support, but what I’ve learned since then hasn’t changed my native talent, it’s all practical stuff that I could have acquired at any time before.
Ten years from now I suppose I’ll be able to repost this verbatim.
I thought talent was my main bottleneck rather than just time spent playing. The reason was that I didn’t have any idea of how much time it takes for each little increment in ability. Just playing and playing makes you better and better, but a tiny bit at a time. You need to play and play and play and play to improve enough to have something easily visible.
One of the big things I’ve learned is how far work will take you as a musician. If you shed every day of your life, you’ll get pretty decent.
For example there was a spot in a song that called for a solo and my solo just sucked. So I doubled down on that spot and tried out a million possibilities until I finally had a good idea for how to approach it, and then the solo played itself just fine. In the meantime my wife nearly left me because of the horrible racket, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
An NPR story (mp3) on my home sacred harp group in Berkeley: Sacred Harp: the punk rock of choral music.
2 out of 3 Joy Drops played Art Ark Gallery in San Jose last night. Good people watching – the women seemed to be competing for most outrageous shoes.
Tomorrow we’re playing by the pool in a park in San Rafael. I love summer gigging.
Q: How do you find a lead guitarist?
A: Wait until after he sees you before you take out the shotgun.
Yup, I made that one up myself.
Late in a long gig musicians often end up telling musician jokes. This is actually better than the other one I knew about guitar players.
The Joy Drops played three times lately.
Memorial Day we played at a BBQ in Berkeley. It was a perfect setup for us – beer, daylight, slack. The party had an art school faction and an average joe faction. The average joes hung out and dug it, the artists stayed away in droves. We played ok but just ok – I was rusty after a month off.
The day after we played a bar called The Pour House in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. We were in excellent form and rocked the house. You could tell we did good because the bartender was happy about moving more drinks than normal.
Then we played Mojo Bicycle Cafe on Divisadero St in San Francisco. It’s half cafe, half bike store. This was just two of us, Noah on standup bass and me on guitar, vocals, and mandolin. Mojo has a great feeling to it. The front opens up, the people are casual, the flow just kills for some reason. Our first set was off but the second was strong, and that’s when the room was full.
Noah and I are playing as a duo again next month, at Art Ark Gallery in San Jose for First Friday on July 6. It was fun to do last night because I could really hear Noah’s playing. He had great tone and mood.
That’s a cajun-style jam in Sunday morning sunshine with Dwight from Les Amis Zydeco on accordion. It was fun to get my Foghat on for the guitar solo.
The Joy Drops will play at The Frog and Fiddle in the east bay on the night of April 13. Start time 7:30. We’ll probably do two sets and be done around 10. 1544 Webster Street, Alameda, CA 94501.
They do upscale African food, congolese and senegalese, and after the diners clear out the bar fills up. I like the place. Good vibe.
The Joy Drops will play at Mojo Bicycle Cafe on the night of April 22. Start time 6:30 or 7. We’ll probably do two sets and be done by 9. 639 Divisadero, San Francisco, CA 94117.
My solo act has turned into a four piece band, The Joy Drops. So I have hooked up a web site for the band:
I have posted a YouTube recording of a 1903 vaudeville number called “Japanesa.”
The composition is credited to “Yama Sen (Arranged by J. A. Le Barge)”. I think Yama Sen is a pseudonym for Le Barge. Here’s him:
Thanks to paperclip design for the sheet music I learned it from:
I love this interview/riff/rant on participatory music by the stellar childrens’ musician Dan Zanes.
I have assembled a little PDF booklet for “African Polka”, a song which I have blogged previously here and here and .
My booklet has the original sheet music from the old olden days with chords added to make it easier to jam on. It has an introduction talking about the tune in general. It has new sheet music for my own version of the song. This new notation has less extraneous detail and more white space, so is easier to read. There are transposed versions of the new notation for Bb instruments like trumpet and for F instruments like alto horn. My booklet also has the Lilypond source code for my own version.
I did this as a hack, I guess. It’s an experiment in making ebooks for music.
Download my booklet here: http://soupgreens.com/africapolka/AfricanPolka-book.pdf
My Lilypond source code is also at http://soupgreens.com/africapolka/African Polka.ly
My solo gigs at an upscale local grocery chain called Andronico’s have bloomed into five weeks of steady bookings for a 3-4 piece band. It’s a neat idea: they’re in the food business, and food is a sensual experience that goes with music. Us live human musicians help to make their customers passionate. I respect that this is a solid business case for performers, Napster or not.
We’ll play noon-3 at the San Anselmo store the first four Saturdays in March and in the Berkeley store on the last Saturday. The band will have trumpet, alto horn, guitar, violin, dobro, mandolin, and standup bass (though not all at every gig).
A fringe benefit for the musicians is getting to wisecrack about groceries. The down side is interrupting your solo to help with bagging.
Mantra: always be gigging. When you get in the flow of playing out a lot, that’s when the performances get good. No one thing makes your music good. It’s about the flow.
I’m playing the grocery store again next Saturday, this time with Paul McCue on trumpet and Rolf Wilkinson on guitar and singing. It’s the same chain, Andrononico’s, this time in San Anselmo instead of North Berkeley.
On Sunday I’m playing a cafe in Berkeley called Nomad. I’ll be doing dobro and mandolin with a bluesy singer named James Byfield.
After that, Friday night March 9 at a bar in Alameda called the Frog and Fiddle. James and I will be joined by our friends Huntley and Cal on standup bass and violin. Here’s a sample recording (with bad sound) from a rehearsal:
Next after that is March 25 – Paul and I will play at the Oakland marathon. There will be an endless stream of exhausted but exhilarated people going by. It’s a morning gig out in the sunshine. No money but the runners whoop and wave. It’s fun and I get a tiny bit better.
This is a spoken word radio piece – http://www.forward.com/workspace/assets/audio/BESHKIN_SACRED_HARP.mp3.
About a year-and-a-half ago, I went through a devastating breakup and, soon after, began a love affair with perhaps the strangest hobby an ex-yeshiva girl could imagine: Sacred Harp singing.
Surely, in 1759, when Joseph Hart wrote the words “Speak and let the worst be known, Speaking may relieve thee,” in the hymn that later became “The Grieved Soul,” he did not mean, “You may feel better if you call your Upper West Side therapist.” But that was what I heard. The song “Poland,” with the words “God of my life, look gently down, Behold the pains I feel,” was not really about a breakup. But from the depths of my grief, it sounded as if it was written just for me. After awhile, however, all this comfort I was taking in Sacred Harp music began to make me a little uncomfortable.
What was I doing? There is no doubt that I have managed to lose my place in the Jewish world, and each year it gets harder to return. I’m nearing 40. I don’t have kids. I always figured I would stake my claim somewhere in the Jewish community. Instead, here I was, singing about salvation in a dimly lit church, a few feet away from a granite bowl of holy water.
IMO 6 am is the *perfect* time for recording my loudest mandolin playing in a hotel room. What does the guy in the next room know.
Sleep? Wha? #sorryboutthat #jetlag
The tune is http://www.paperclipdesign.com/19ctunes/japanesa_1m.gif
1930s publicity shots, 1870s make believe.
From the photo book Vintage Photographs of Arcane Americana
I transposed the sheet music for an old tune called Jenny Lind Polka so that I could easily jam on this song with players of various different instruments.
This song was popularized in 1846 by a dance instructor named Allen Dodworth, who is also responsible for inventing a way to waltz in 5/4. Here’s that 1852 original in the Library of Congress. I recorded a composition for dancing his waltz, a pice called “Dodworth’s Five Step”, on three occasions, including once in my Ghost Solos EP. I learned Jenny Lind Polka from a relatively modern transcription in “The Fiddler’s Fake Book.”
In case my transpositions are useful to others, here is my sheet music:
That’s a single multi-page PDF with a different key on each page. It has the following parts:
| Key | instruments |
|---|---|
| G | Concert pitch: fiddle, mandolin, guitar, etc. |
| D | F: french horn |
| A | Bb: trumpet, clarinet, tenor sax, soprano sax |
| E | Eb: baritone sax, alto sax |
| tab | tablature for guitar players who don’t read notation |
For people who work with digital instruments, here’s MIDI:
For people who might want to edit the original Sibelius source file, here’s that:
Here’s a version I found on YouTube that’s not exactly the same but close enough:
More shots from my blockbuster performance at the grocery store. It is with great pride that I have so little pride.
I played the liquor aisle at the supermarket this weekend. No lie.
Lucas Gonze playing music at the supermarket, photo by T. Jay Fowler
There are artistes who would be repulsed by this situation, but I am not one. It was not a bad gig at all, I swear. I played hard, and a couple friends actually stopped by to watch. It was fun to see them lurking in the aisle – supermarkets aren’t made for gawking.
I gave this little rap: “There are those who say Napster didn’t hurt the rock stars. But don’t believe them. Who am I? Why, I used to be known as… BARBRA STREISAND.”
Does this 1889 bonnet head lady look like anything to you?
Hint:
Here’s the source book, including the old sheet music:
About a year and a half ago I answered an ad for musicians to participate in an art project. The project was about “rewilding.” As far as I could figure it out I think the idea was nature taking back developed land.
I brought my old tater bug mandolin to the meeting with the artist, a young french woman. We met up at a forgotten block that feels like nature really is taking it back.
She put a little audio recorder in a patch of weeds and went across the street to shoot video with a Flip camera. It didn’t take long. We did one take each of two songs, parted on the spot, and I never heard anything else about it until just now when I stumbled across it on YouTube, under the title Rewilding With Intention.
It’s not my best singing, but the feeling of the place makes it worth tolerating.
A couple songs from Ghost Solos are in a short film called There is work for you in the sky: see Mars! The short has a lot of charm.
There is work for you in the sky: see Mars! from Antonino Valvo on Vimeo.
I learned about it from this warm email titled “About your job”:
Hello Lucas
My name is Antonino and I’m writing from Italy. I am a young filmmaker and I am writing about the history of my project.
I’ll be brief: some time ago an actor friend of mine asked me to make a video of his monologue that he had brought as a final exam in his drama school in Bristol. The text was taken from “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury, in particular a novel called The Off Season.
I made the video trying to complete an original work and self-sufficient rather than a simple recording of a dialogue. The result was a ten-minute short film rather special, not particularly beautiful or great, but I think an interesting experiment.
Anyway while I was working in post production, I tried, just for fun and curiosity, some music that could accompany him and help create the atmosphere of this sci-fi Western.
During my research on a free music site I found your songs from your album”Ghost Solos” and I found these really perfect for what I had in mind and I mounted on the video. The effect was amazing. Now that the video is complete I would first like to apologize if I have done this without your permission, but I honestly did not believe that the video had any visibility or was seen by some other person of my friends.
But now I’m writing because so many people tell me that the video may be interesting for some kind of sci-fi film festival, and I would not miss this opportunity also to thank the many people who helped me for free to realization.Obviously I will not do it without your knowledge, and I’m writing to ask permission to use your own sounds for public screenings.
As you might have guessed the film has no budget production or distribution, and I can not afford to pay the rights, so I’m asking you a favor.
You do not know me and I do not know you, but I think you understand, because your work has given me this impression, I’m not doing this for money. I have ambitions and projects, but it is not business, it is passion. I hope that you agree to grant use of your two songs and I’ll share with you every success this project were to obtain.
The video you can see on my vimeo channel, here’s the link:
I hope you do not be offended if I uploaded on the Internet, I assure you that I have kept the private link.
Aspect of your news and thanks for your attention.
Anthony Valvo
When I previously blogged the old old sheet music for “Pompey Ran Away”, I used a scan that only an insane person would try to read:
To make restitution I dug up a better source and clipped out the image for myself and am herein sharing a version that will not cause you to go blind:
I found it on page 57 of a PDF at imslp of Volume 1 of James Aird’s 1782 music book “A SELECTION of Scotch, Englith, Irith, and Foreign AIRS Adapted to the FIFE, VIOLIN, or GERMAN-FLUTE”
Some funny song titles from that book:
And my favorite:
I enjoyed this round and organic banjo playing by a guy named Dan Gelert:
Eph Got a Coon
Buckdancer’s Choice
We’ll All Go to Heaven
When the Devil Goes Blind
Black-Eyed Susie
These mp3s are deep links to his site so will go 404 sooner if not later.
From “A Few Words of Advice to Singers” in an 1813 songbook called “David’s Harp”:
Let the mouth be opened freely, but not wide, and let the tones proceed from the chest — otherwise they cannot be good.
Avoid singing as though the nose was stopped up; — this is commonly called “singing through the nose,” but it is the very reverse of it, as may be proved by closing the nostrils.
Never attempt to sing a part for which your voice is not calculated; for if you strive to reach tones which are above your compass — your abortive attempt will have a tendency to depress the pitch of the tune and create unpleasant sensations in yourself and others — men who cannot reach F with ease, had better sing Bass.
Stand or sit erect, and avoid all ridiculous gesticulation and affectation; “suit your looks and action to the words,” and if the subject be praise and thanksgiving, you need not look as though you were at a funeral.
Above all, let the melody of the song, be accompanied by the melody of the heart; never losing sight of the important direction of the poet, “Rehearse his praise with awe profound, Let knowledge lead the song; Nor mock him with a solemn sound, Upon a thoughtless tongue.”
A giant buffalo-shaped building projected for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, NY.
BB calls FF “Hype Machine’s Music Speed Dating”:
Hype Machine has introduced a new feature called Fast Forward that’s like speed dating for indie rock fans and indie rock songs. Here’s how it works: After clicking “go” on the Fast Forward home page, Hype Machine plays 30-second samples of songs and shows the blog post from which the song came. (For the uninitiated, the Hype Machine is a streaming service that plays songs that have been posted at a select group of music blogs.)
If Fast Forward seems familiar, it may remind you of Shuffler.fm, a great site that streams music from music blogs through a couple dozen or so curated channels of both mainstream and niche genres. Each song played at Shuffler comes with the blog page with the source music (Shuffler takes the music from each blog’s RSS feed), allowing the listener to read up on the artist as the song plays. Shuffler launched last year, got some good press and won a B2C award at MidemNet Labs startup competition earlier this year.
It’s striking that Billboard, which is the voice of the legacy music industry, has a friendly feeling towards both hypem and shuffler.
